Chapter 70 The Truth Hurts More When It’s Remembered
POV Scarlett:
“The truth, brother—I’m only telling the truth.” Cole stopped looking at his brother and turned back to stare at me. “Scarlett, I don’t love you, and I never will. Our sex is good, but that’s all it is—sex. I wanted to fuck, and you wanted to give it to me, period.”
Bile rose in my throat and I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from vomiting at his cruel words. He doesn’t love me? It was only sex? All those months meant nothing to him? I can’t believe what he’s saying. Do the others think the same thing? I came determined to do what my father forced me to do, but Cole’s revelation changed my plans—changed everything. Now I’m the one who needs to know what they feel for me.
Was it all in my head? Was it all an illusion?
“You… you…” I controlled myself as much as I could, but the tears began to burn my eyes, and all I had left was to be too proud to let them fall. And that’s what I did—I didn’t allow a single one to drop. “Do you think… like Cole does?”
I wish I hadn’t asked that, but I need to know. I need this answer to move on. Maybe knowing they never loved me will make the breakup hurt less, and the emptiness they’ll leave will pass faster, and love will stop existing someday.
I don’t believe it will.
“Look, Scarlett…”
“Stop, Logan. I asked a simple question.” I cut him off. “So just answer.” I let indifference drip from my mouth, as if the men in front of me weren’t killing me, as if their words weren’t tearing me apart.
“I don’t love you. It’s just sex.” He answered curtly, and his reply broke my heart a little more.
“I don’t love you either. I thought you knew.” Dylan said it, not having the courage to look me in the eyes.
“Scarlett, I always enjoyed the moments we shared, but it was never love. It was sex, and only that.” Cole spoke. Looking into his eyes, I saw the sincerity in his words, and that finally broke my heart for good.
They don’t love me. They never loved me. It was sex—nothing more than that. How stupid I was, as if love like that could exist, equal and true, between six people. I feel my throat close up. The urge to run far away from them and cry my hidden pain is strong, and not caring about them, I turned my back and started walking, leaving them behind, knowing my leaving will only hurt me.
“Scarlett, wait.” Asher’s voice was a balm—calm and concern I needed in this moment when the world is crumbling at my feet. I turned to him, and his tear-filled eyes proved what I always knew: he loves me. What we had was as real for him as it was for me.
“Speak.” I tried to sound indifferent; I couldn’t. I can’t do that to him. Asher is my calm. Of the Four, he was always my quiet love.
“I love you, Scarlett. I love you so much.” He came closer and took my hands. “Tell me you feel the same. Tell me—is it me you love?”
I love you, Asher, with all my heart. Just as I love each one of your brothers—equally, fiercely, and painfully.
I think of my father’s words, of the hard decision I had to make, and because of what the men I love just said, I know what I must do. Loving them changes nothing. Asher being the only one to return that love changes nothing. And I know that if I even considered staying only with him, we wouldn’t work. His brothers are everything to him. The right woman for Asher has to be the right woman for all his brothers—and that isn’t me.
What I’m going to do hurts. It hurts to know that, for me to leave, I’ll have to break the heart of the kindest, most captivating man I’ve ever known. Everything I lived with them will be kept forever in my heart, but this is the end of my story with them. And the only thing I can wish for them, even if it wounds me, is that the right woman finds them—and that they never let her leave.
“I don’t love you.” I said it in the coldest tone I could manage. “I love Cole, and as he made very clear, it was only sex.” I took one last look at each brother and pinned my eyes on Asher. “Just like it was with you—only sex, Asher.”
“No!”
I open my eyes and startle at the worried faces of Damian, Liam, Ethan, and Noah staring at me. I feel my body tremble with the force of that memory. The pain in my heart overflows as tears spill from my eyes. I lied to Asher and made him suffer. I was cruel. I didn’t have to do it that way—I could have been honest. He would have understood. Asher would have understood, and I didn’t have to make him hurt.
“Scarlett, are you okay? You scared us…”
“I… I… I need to fix a mistake.” My voice shook with pain, with guilt. I owe nothing to Logan, Cole, or Dylan. But Asher? I owe him, and so much.
“What are you talking about?” Damian is visibly worried. All of them are, and there’s no way to sugarcoat this—I need to be honest… about everything.
“I need to go back to the past. I hurt someone who didn’t deserve it, and all the memories I hadn’t recovered came back all at once…”
“Scarlett, you—” I raise my hand to interrupt Noah.
“I lied. After the collapse because of the conversation with Liam, I didn’t remember anything. I didn’t know who you were.” I exhale, closing my eyes. “I needed to adapt until I figured out what was happening, so I pretended I remembered everything.” I open my eyes, and seeing the wounded expressions on the faces of the men I love brings a deep pain to the surface. “As the days went by, I recovered some— not all—and I knew that if I asked anything, you’d catch me in the lie. My voice had already gotten better, but I pretended it hadn’t. I didn’t want to talk… I didn’t want to give myself away.”
“You… lied to us?” The accusing tone in Damian’s voice didn’t go unnoticed. “You deceived us? Why? You can already walk—are you lying about that too?”
“No.” I answer, wiping the tears from my face. “I remember everything. Even what I wish I didn’t remember.” I breathe out. “As soon as I can walk again, I’m going to travel. I need to resolve something.”
“Where are you going?” Ethan’s question makes me swallow hard, worried about their reactions.
“I’m going to meet someone very important again—someone who saved me from myself at my worst.” The smile Asher gave me when I first met him makes the tightness in my heart hurt so much I think I might be bleeding.
“Who?” Damian doesn’t ask. He demands.
“Asher Hawthorne—my first and best friend, and also one of my ex-boyfriends.”
I closed my eyes the instant the wounded eyes of the Blackwells fixed on my guilty ones.